B.P.R.D., Vol. 4: The Dead

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense and their new team leader, a former corpse himself, moves into their new headquarters only to unearth a gigantic long-buried secret involving United States government covert experiments and Nazi scientists. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola teams with artist Guy Davis and co-writer John Arcudi to carve out a bold new direction for the B.P.R.D., while Abe Sapien, still reeling from the revelation of his former life as a Victorian scientist, meets his long-dead wife in their crumbling home by the sea. The strangest team book in comics gets weirder with this tale of the walking dead, madness, the Spear of Destiny, and a monstrous gateway to heaven.

From Booklist

Perhaps Mignola is weaning himself from Hellboy spin-off B.P.R.D. For Plague of Frogs (2005), he replaced himself with artist Guy Davis, and now he has a coauthor, John Arcudi, taking on a lot of the writing, according to the afterword. Davis' craggy, line-y style replaces Mignola's high-contrast, volumetric manner with no loss of creepy atmospherics, and Arcudi's dialogue fits the mise-en-scene as well as Mignola's ever did. The plot is double--stranded. While fire-starter Liz Sherman, Roger the homunculus, and permanently disembodied medium Johann Kraus gain a new partner in risen-from-death special-ops captain Ben Daimio and investigate an abandoned weapons lab in the mountains of Colorado, their Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense teammates Dr. Kate Corrigan and amphibious Abe Sapien delve further into the New England cult of Plague of Frogs. The Colorado quartet unearths an erstwhile Nazi researcher and a doorway to what he thinks is paradise, and Abe is wooed by a figure out of his past. Just as good and betimes as piquantly subdued as superior X-Files episodes. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Reviews

News